Spotify

American readers – brace yourselves. The most-hyped European music phenomenon since the Beatles has finally arrived. After two years’ wait, Spotify is set to open its doors in the US on Thursday. Read more

Location-based service Foursquare is to start incorporating daily deals from social shopping companies such as Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt Groupe into its product, Mashable reports. Foursqaure plans to pass on daily coupons from its partners to the service’s users — taking a cut of the revenue along the way. Read more

Spotify has just launched a new download service and integration with non-touchscreen iPods, capabilities that have been more than a year in the making.

But Spotify is insisting this lengthy timescale is not another symptom of its tensions with record labels – rather it shows just how difficult it is to create a rival to iTunes for managing music on the go. Read more

The buzz around the stratospheric private market valuations of US technology groups such as Facebook, Groupon and Living Social is spreading to Europe, as investors seek to make the most of growth opportunities in internet companies.

Warner Brothers is claiming to be the first film studio to offer movies for rent via Facebook, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Friends of Christopher Nolan’s Batman film Dark Knight can rent the film by going to the film’s Facebook page and clicking a “rent” icon. The cost per rental is 30 Facebook Credits, or $3, and viewers will have 48 hours from the purchase to watch the film.

Spotify, the European music streaming service is ‘a few weeks away’ from inking a deal for US rights to songs from Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, people familiar with the talks have told Reuters. However, Spotify could end up launching without Warner Music Group, the number three music label group, says one person close to the talks.

Spotify has stayed silent about the impact of Apple’s new subscription plans, perhaps because it was too busy negotiating $100m in new funding, but MOG has now joined the list of digital media start-ups and venerable publishers expressing consternation and confusion.

“From a principle perspective, I have a problem,” says CEO David Hyman. “We’ve spent years building this, and invested millions. It’s not clear to me why they deserve a bigger piece of my business than I get. It doesn’t feel right at all.” Read more

Spotify is in the process of closing a financing that values the European streaming music start-up at about $1bn, according to TechCrunch. DST, the venture firm that has backed Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, is said to be leading the deal.

Zynga, the company behind online games FarmVille and CityVille, is in talks on an investment that would value it at nearly $10bn and could pave the way for an initial public offering next year, the New York Times’ DealBook reports. The company is in discussion with T. Rowe Price and Fidelity Investments, among other investors, for a round of financing near $500m.

Last year, the ad-supported streaming service introduced “offline listening” to its mobile and desktop music applications for premium subscribers without ever mentioning the dreaded phrase “DRM” – in spite of the fact that access to the songs disappears as soon as you stop paying.

In the UK, We7 has been quietly building its offering after launching here around the same time as Spotify in late 2008.

Some 3m people now use its free, ad-supported site. Last month saw a new £4.99-a-month ad-free service, followed today by the release of a £9.99 monthly “Premium+” offering that adds mobile access to its library of millions of tracks. Read more

“Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry, and, as far as Warner Music is concerned, will not be licensed,” Edgar Bronfman Jr, Warner Music’s chairman, said on the major label’s analyst call yesterday.

“The sort of ‘Get all of the music you want for free and then, with a few bells and whistles, maybe we can move you to a premium price’ strategy is not the kind of approach to business we’ll be supporting in the future.” Read more

It is one of the most hotly anticipated apps yet to appear on the iPhone.

From today, Spotify – the digital music application credited by some for finally luring listeners away from online piracy – can sit alongside iTunes on Apple’s mobile, as well as on phones running Google’s Android software.

On the PC, Spotify allows its users to listen to any of its millions of tracks for free, supported by advertising. On a mobile, users must upgrade to its premium subscription, which costs £9.99 a month or £119.88 a year (and also provides ad-free listening on the PC). Read more

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About the authors

Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.

Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 25 years. He reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby from 2004 to 2013, before returning to London, where he is now lead writer of the #techFT daily newsletter.

Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and moved from London to join the team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers personal tech and the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.

Hannah Kuchler writes about technology and Silicon Valley from the FT's San Francisco bureau. She covers social media including Facebook and Twitter and the dark and mysterious world of cybersecurity. Hannah has worked for the FT in London, Hong Kong and New York, reporting on everything from British politics to the Chinese internet.